Just war /2

In the past history of humanity, the concept of “just war” was widely accepted: the Crusades, the colonial wars, wars of conquest and “civilization”. However, the horror generated by the second world war seemed to have produced an allergic reaction in the collective consciousness worldwide. As children and grandchildren of that generation we’ve come to reject war as a means of resolving conflicts between nations.

But in the end, all this seems to have been only temporary: with the disappearance of the generation that endured World War II, the grandchildren of those men and women are about to hear again of war, but this time with any adjective that softens, “just war” or “humanitarian”, or “democratic”.

Many voices are being raised in these directions, from different backgrounds, not only war mongers, dictators or extremists, but also political moderate or liberal, and influential men of thought and heard; debates and so on which focus on legal questions of method and properties to justify a reason for a just war!

Surely it has an effect at lower levels of the society: the chance to use the media contributes the apparent controversy of the subject, thus justifying a certain freedom of action.

What has been said so far, suggests that it is therefore necessary to consider the issue “just war” not as a philosophical anachronism, a relic of the problem now buried under layers of thought and feeling civil, but a current issue and which still need to discuss.

If we try to deal with the problem of existence a “just war” is useful to try to distinguish two aspects :the ethical and political approach. This distinction is difficult, because the two questions overlap and even the political analysis approach will also rely on ethical judgments.